Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property

"The Genome Defense" – Gene Patents, Civil Rights Litigation and American Government

_{Book Talk and Panel Discussion}

In 2013, the US Supreme Court held that naturally occurring genetic sequences may not be patented, instantly invalidating hundreds, if not thousands, of existing patents and opening the market to genetic screens for cancer and other hereditary diseases. The case, Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, was remarkable in many ways, not least because it was prosecuted on behalf of twenty plaintiffs -- researchers, professional associations, medical practitioners and individual patients -- by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Patent Foundation as a case centered on individual civil rights rather than a technical interpretation of the U.S. Patent Act. The case also sheds light on the poorly understood role of the executive branch and its many offices and agencies in formulating U.S. policy on science-based issues. In The Genome Defense: Inside the Epic Legal Battle to Determine Who Owns Your DNA (Hachette/Algonquin, 2021), Professor Jorge Contreras brings this important and unique case to life. Through nearly 100 interviews with attorneys, advocates, judges, patients and government officials, Contreras peels back the layers of this remarkable episode in American legal history and explains not only what happened, but why and how, and what its implications are for the future of medical science.

About the Author

Jorge L. Contreras is the James T. Jensen Endowed Professor for Transactional Law and Director of the Program on Intellectual Property and Technology Law at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Human Genetics, University of Utah School of Medicine. Professor Contreras’s research focuses on intellectual property, technical standards, antitrust law and science policy. He is the editor or author of twelve books and more than 150 scholarly articles and chapters. During his career he has served on advisory committees of the US National Institutes of Health, the National Academies of Science, and as Co-Chair of the National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists. Professor Contreras’s award-winning book, The Genome Defense: Inside the Epic Legal Battle to Determine Who Owns Your DNA (NY: Hachette/Algonquin, 2021), which has received praise from media outlets from the New York Times and Wall St. Journal to Nature and Law360, describes the landmark civil rights litigation that ended gene patenting in America. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School (JD) and Rice University (BSEE, BA), and an elected member of the American Law Institute.